The description for the item below, opening bid $9.99, reads as follows:

80 year old REAL PHOTO postcard with fascinating view of life in Albanian Muslim town of Korytza. Three women are wrapped from head to toe. The smock is black, the head wrap is white and blocks all but their eyes. Looks straight out of a mummy movie. [One] woman carries an umbrella. Minarets in background. Also an (uncovered) boy walking down street. Card in good condition but has little cracks in creases on upper border towards right, plus some wear in upper left visible in the picture. Back is unwritten on. Title says “SOUVENIR DE KORYTZA” in French.

So what we have is additional evidence for what we already know: that the phrases used by our government and media to describe Albanian Islam — such as “a secular tradition” and “historically secular” — refer mainly to Communist-era “tradition” and history of Albanians, and not before. From Andy Wilcoxson’s pre-published manuscript about revelations from the Milosevic trial:

In 1880 Kirby Green, the British consul for Northern Albania, wrote about the situation in Kosovo, saying, “The Albanian League is an organization of the most fanatical Muslims in the country. Those people are now taken up with extreme religious fanaticism and hatred of Christians. With the exception perhaps of Mecca, Prizren is the most dangerous spot for a Christian to be in all Mohammedan countries.”

Wilcoxson also writes:

On September 9, 1901, a British diplomatic cable sent to the Marquess of Lansdowne said: “Old Serbia [Kosovo] is still a restive region because of the Albanians’ lawlessness, vengeance and racial hatred.”

So the first situation described is making a comeback, and the second one has gotten worse.

Incidentally, it was at the meeting which created the Prizren League in 1878 that the idea of Greater Albania was born. And here we are today:

A senior official with the newly elected Kosovo Albanian political party says that a referendum for unification of Kosovo to Albania is a possibility after the separatist Albanian regime in Kosovo unilaterally declares independence and Western powers recognize them, reports Kosovo Albanian paper Koha Ditore.

Member of PDK Presidency, Nait Hasani said that after declaring independence a referendum to join Albania is a distinct possibility because citizens of Kosovo and Albania are one nation.

“First there should be supervised independence as proposed by Ahtisaari. But it is known that Kosovo and Albania citizens are one nation who want to live in one state,” Hasani is quoted as having told a Polish paper. PDK Spokeswoman Vlora Çitaku does not share Hasani’s view and insists that the goal is to build an independent and sovereign Kosovo that will join EU.

Nait Hasani is born in 1965 in a Kosovo village of Randubrava near city of Prizren. In 1997, Hasani was sentenced to 20 years in prison for [the] murder of 3 Serbs in Decani and an attempted murder of the Dean of the Pristina University Radivoje Popovic, an ethnic Serb. [Incidentally, most Kosovo leaders have such a distinction.] In 2002, [the] Serbian government gave Hasani an amnesty for the killings. Hasani is quoted [as] saying that the amnesty was a result of the pressure exerted by the Albanian “allies the USA”…